And the wolf loved the rose
by insidiousreality
Summary: And Sansa doesn't know when the air between them became thick like this and she doesn't know if G feels it too, but there's something about that wistful smile that makes her think, hope really, that she does. Modern AU


They've always balanced each other so well, fitting together like the pieces of a puzzle, apart meaningless, but when together a lovely picture. At least that's how Sansa feels, has always felt. She's fine with Margaery, or G or Gigi depending on how close one is to her, being the centre attention, as she has never wanted to be, preferring the safety of G's shadow.

Margaery is tactile, she traces the lines of Sansa's hands and cuddles into her side. And she's used to it until one day it turns her to putty. Out of nowhere. It hits her like a ton of bricks, and she hates hyperbole and idioms, but it's the only way she can describe the feeling that so suddenly is inside her. The sudden lack of control she feels whenever she's around G. Which isn't very practical, because they're together constantly, like right now for example. The first day of senior year and she's trying not to watch G sleep, she really is, but she looks so lovely when she sleeps. Like she's finally putting down that masks she constantly wears, even around Sansa.

Then her alarm goes off and Sansa lets her eyes fall closed again, moves her limb as if she's yawning awake as honey eyes flitter open to look at her. These are the moments where she feels like putty the most. The moments where G just looks at her. And maybe Sansa is building it up, but she feels like, only sometimes letting herself, that in these moments G looks at her with a sense of desperation, like she can't believe Sansa stayed with her, like she can't believe that she has Sansa. It breaks her heart. Because G is strong, too strong, it's a function of her upbringing. Mother spending most of the year at the family homes in St. Barth's, Gstaad, and London. Father politically wheeling and dealing in DC. Grandmother the only constant, other than Sansa of course. Grandmother who G loves desperately, but Sansa knows causes the mask to tighten. She used to have Loras, but he's off at college in California, just about 2,780 miles from them in New York G reminds her often. She says she's going to go out there too after they graduate. Sansa knows she'll never go too far from New York. Because in many ways they're different, but in terms of New York they're the same. It's part of their blood, their pulses matching the city's as they pace themselves up and down the streets.

But that doesn't mean when G says it she doesn't panic. They've been best friends since they were three years old, and thank God for technology, because they haven't ever spent more then three days without talking. G spent three days on a yacht off of Greece and had no service and cried hysterically when she finally heard Sansa's voice. And maybe Sansa adds these moments together to give them too much meaning, maybe she does, she'll admit it, but there's something about them all together that's more than a friendship, especially when she adds the way it feels when G strokes her arm to help her wake up.

"First day of senior year." G says it with awe, like they're looking at a painting in the Guggenheim that neither of them can figure out but know, in their souls, and because of their countless hours under Grandmother Olenna's art history tutelage, that is something ridiculously special. "It's a bit scary, isn't it?" It stills Sansa, hearing the girl lying next to her, though G looks everywhere but at Sansa, admitting to fear. Inexplicably it causes her to simply feel happy she's there next to her best friend. Until high school Sansa's parents stuck to their strict rules of no school night sleepovers, but then G started sneaking into their home at all hours of the night, and like most things G got what she wanted. Even from Sansa's parents, who insist they love G, they really do, it's just sometimes she's a bit of a bad influence on Sansa they say. Even from them G can pull out what she wants, or what she needs she says. Because in those unmasked moments she'll say things to Sansa, things that weight her stomach down with a stone as pins and needles travel up her frayed nerve endings. Things like sometimes she can't sleep without her, things like she loves her best, things like she can't ever leave her because she would die. They're hyperbolic, but there's something about the way that G says them that makes them ring so true, like G's own Sansa dogma.

Sansa follows her out of bed. They've already spent the necessary time preparing their outfits for the day ahead. They hang inside G's massive closet. Sansa's mom used to call the Tyrell's gauche, new-money, and even vulgar until Sansa told her it hurt her feelings because even if the Tyrell's were new money she loved them. Sure the Tyrells have been rich since the late 1800s, but Sansa's family is different her mother assures her, plants in her, though she reminds her at the same time that it's incredibly uncouth to discuss wealth in anyway. She just wants her to know the difference between her and everyone else. Because they may live in one of the largest private homes in the country, Winterfell the largest in Manhattan in fact, but it's different because it's their family home, generations of Stark's running down the same halls, and sleeping in the same rooms that her family now does. So while their house in its turn of the century grandeur is entirely appropriate, owning the top ten floors of a new construction high rise is absolutely not, even if your entire family lives there, from cousins to grandmothers. Sansa would never tell her mother, but she loves G's home. Winterfell, which she loves desperately, she really does, is cold and austere, except for her carefully appointed bedroom of course. While Highgarden, named for Olenna's massive green house on the top, is sumptuous, warm, and inviting, and perhaps that's a function of G walking the halls, filling it with her warmth, it probably is. Still she loves her time here, no matter how vulgar a show of wealth it is to her mother. And the view. The view like they own Manhattan, like they are the queens of the entire island looking down at all their subjects, a game they in fact used to play before it became inappropriate for age.

She changes must faster than G, whose movements are languid and dreamy, like she's still asleep, so she's watching her as she applies her makeup, her literal mask, though this mask is altogether unnecessary for G's long eyelashes and flawless pores. She'll smile over at Sansa every now and then, a wistful turn of the corners of her mouth, looking like she wants to murmur something, only deciding at the last moment that it's silly with a shake of her head. And Sansa doesn't know when the air between them became thick like this and she doesn't know if G feels it too, but there's something about that wistful smile that makes her think, hope really, that she does.

G is putting the final touches to her mask when Elinor glides in, her bag over one shoulder, balancing three lattes in her hands. There are advantages to G's cousin living four floors below her, morning lattes brought directly to her being one of the main ones, but then there's Elinor's almost perpetual presence, other than the sleeping hours. It's pretty difficult to avoid someone they run into at the breakfast table. But Sansa does love Elinor, sure it's absolutely differently than she loves G, nevertheless Elinor is silly and snarky and all around a wonderful companion to have. Always up on all the good gossip, a quick quip on what she thinks of everyone and anyone as they walk down the hallways of school.

"How can you make dress code look so fucking perfect Gigi?" Elinor asks as she passes Sansa her latte with kisses to both her cheeks, a habit she now insisted on after spending the summer in Monaco. It's true. G looks striking, almost overwhelmingly so. She's paler than she usually is at the end of summer, having chosen to spend her summer training for ballet instead of joining her family in Europe. Her hair falls in perfectly constructed honey waves along her face and the content curve of her lips at Elinor's compliment only serves to heighten the affect of her beauty. G slides by Sansa with a quick careful squeeze of her hand. Sansa could be wrong, because even to her G remains an enigma most of them time, but G's cheeks redden a bit at the touch, the grin on her face shifting from Elinor's compliment to something completely foreign. "Did someone tell Dany when she should be ready?" While Sansa and G can fill their time together with continual comfortable silences, Elinor is a constant whir of motion and dialogue. "I talked to Doreah last night, but she's honestly super helpless."

"Is Dany still not talking to her?" G has sat down on the couch next to Sansa, her legs thrown over her own, rendering Sansa rigid, as G replies to Elinor while she examines her nails.

"Oh no they've been over that for ages."

"They weren't speaking?" Sansa adds, obviously confused.

"You know how the two of them are. Doreah's such a fucking space case slut and usually Dany loves her, but Dor ditched her this summer when they were at a party to go sleep with a woolly mammoth of a man." Sometimes it surprises Sansa how Elinor talks about their supposed best friends, it makes her anxious how Nor may wax poetic to G when she's not around. Right now she mostly just feels out of it, the way she often feels after returning from summer.

"A fucking space case slut hmm?" G basically hums with a smile back to Nor, who lights up in a smile at her cousin's enjoyment of her choice of words. Because in the end that's all that Elinor really wants from anything that she says. She once admitted to Sansa how hard she thinks it probably is to be G. The obvious heir to the Tyrell family because Willas is a helpless cripple and Loras is too attached to Renly's ass to do anything of substance; Elinor's words not hers. Olenna has never and will never expect anything of Elinor, which is why it's all the more surprising when she does something well or right. It's better that way she told Sansa as they shared a bottle of wine, waiting for G to finish up with Joffrey as usual. It's easier to have no expectations and go over them than to have all the expectations of an entire dynasty on her shoulders. It's one of those ah ha moments Sansa has with G. They still happen even with knowing each other their entire lives. That's what happens when your best friend is an enigma heir to a billionaire dynasty. Unfortunately there aren't that many people she can compare her particular situation with. G's phone vibrates through Sansa's leg. "Yeah? We'll be right down. Thank you." She hangs up, throwing the phone into her waiting school bag. "Whose ready for senior year losers?" Nor whoops and Sansa tries to smile as big as she can, but there's this unavoidable feeling in the pit of her stomach, something not too far from terror. Because school has gone by so quickly and when senior year ends they'll all go their own ways, and when she thinks about it she doesn't really mean all of them, but really G, and she certainly has no idea what these new feelings mean, but that still doesn't stop the panic that makes her chest tight as she steps into the huge tinted windowed Suburban waiting for them at the foot of the building.


End file.
